The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for automatically cooking alimentary pasta.
As is known, several types of pasta cooking apparatus are presently available for automatically cooking pasta for the use in restaurants, refectories and the like.
These known apparatus essentially comprise a basin housing a removable basket for cooking pasta.
Hot water is supplied to the basin, generally at a controlled temperature, and then the pasta to be cooked and a given amount of salt are added.
At the end of the cooking cycle and after having removed the cooked pasta, a portion of the cooking water is discharged, and a new amount of cold water is added as well as a salt amount nearly corresponding to that previously discharged with the hot water.
This water addition, without discharging all of the used water, is due to the fact that it would not be advantageous to waste the complete thermal power of the used water: thus, by discharging only a portion of the used water, a portion of this thermal power will be preserved.
This procedure, however, is disadvantageous for the cooking cycle since the salt amount to be added may be hardly evaluated; moreover the pasta, in the subsequent cooking cycles is practically cooked in a liquid in which there are dissolved great amounts of the pasta soluble products, deriving from the previous cooking cycles.
Another drawback is that the thermal energy of the discharged water is completely lost with a comparatively great thermal waste.